Ranked and Filed

Posted on June 1, 2002
by Chief Marketer Staff

The PROMO 100 looks a little different this year. We hope you like the makeover.

We’ve been undertaking this annual ranking of the top promotion agencies since 1993. Each year, we’ve evaluated the process to make sure we’re doing just that: Producing a list that accurately reflects the best U.S. agencies — not just the biggest, or the oldest, or the ones who took the time to fill out an entry form.

To that end, we’ve lobbied with some agencies to convince them to enter, because we believed the work they produced — and the clients for which they produced it — earned them a place among the industry’s “best.” (Read our profile of The Promotion Network, for instance, and tell us if you don’t think they belong.) Last year, we began featuring agencies that did not enter but were worthy of recognition nonetheless. This year, we even “cheated” and added two companies whose revenues were reported elsewhere. (Is a ranking of promotion agencies complete without Carlson Marketing Group or Bounty SCA Worldwide?)

Most significantly, we overhauled the ranking formula this year. We eliminated the agency age factor, because consolidation has often made it difficult to pinpoint an agency’s true age (and because, although it can often mean “experienced,” “old” can sometimes mean “tired,” too.)

In its place, we required agencies to submit three campaigns that reflected the quality of their work and their record of success for clients. Judging all that work certainly made things more difficult around the PROMO office, and it has added a certain level of subjectivity to the process. But we felt it was necessary to keep the PROMO 100 what it was meant to be, a resource that will help our 18,000-plus readers in corporate marketing departments identify agencies that will help them do their jobs better.

We think we succeeded. But the ultimate test, as with anything else we print, is what our readers think. So give our ninth-annual PROMO 100 issue a good read, and let us know how we did.